Loyalty

[cjsmith]

I think it was Dave Barry who made the point that dogs are stupid, but if you say so, people get insane with fury, so calling them "loyal" is somehow close and a good compromise.

My cat Little Girl is very... loyal. I took her to the vet this morning for an assortment of samples, and she yowled the whole time (well, except when the two Shiba Inus started barking... she's not so loyal as all that). She hated it. Then she yowled for the whole ride home. And ten minutes later she's lying on my legs as I type this. If I wanted to take her to the vet again right now, I'd have no problem capturing her.

She is also the only cat I've ever had who does not, as best we can tell, know her own name.

I adore this cat. I'll also be the first to admit she's st loyal. Very. :-)

Comments

[layer.livejournal.com]

that's exactly how my bosco was and it only made me love him more.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

So true.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I'm not one of those people that obsess on the Dog v Cat arguments, just like I don't care about the PC v Mac wars.

As you are more than aware, pets are all quite different, are not human, and have no reason to have cross-species comparisons. You might as well add desert tortoises and cockatiels to the mix for comparisons, since some people are completely bonded with those as pets.

Within the species, there ARE certainly stupid pets versus not-as-stupid pets, but then again, we're comparing them to us! :-)

I know any pet is more loyal than most friends and family!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed at the variation in intelligence among pets. Some dogs are a LOT smarter than other dogs. Some cats are a LOT smarter than other cats. Little Girl may be the only cat I've ever had who didn't learn her name, but I had another -- Dizzy -- who's the only one I've ever known who broke his own nose.

Smart or not, I love 'em dearly.

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

The gold standard of stupid (too dumb to be loyal) cats is Kimball, the cat who set himself on fire. He stood in a candle and lit himself up, and my friend only noticed he'd done it because he started yowling because he was too hot. She extinguished the cat and repositioned him. He walked up and set himself on fire AGAIN. She had to extinguish the candle so that he couldn't attempt self-immolation a third time and succeed.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

OMG, you've got to be kidding. I'm chortling here. I thought Dizzy was dumb. (Well, okay, Dizzy was dumb.) That's hilarious.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's slightly funnier. She left out the part where the cat was also sniffing the smoke in the air. *chortle*

[mapache]

I'd wouldn't say it's notably different from the variation in intelligence among humans, just located a little bit further down the scale. (Though it is fascinating to note the sorts of things that are blatantly obvious to us, but which they just don't get. For instance, several of our and chinders's rats have yet to learn that they cannot pick up a second brick of food when they already have one in their mouth, despite it not having worked on any of the other hundreds of occasions on which they have tried to pick up a second brick.)

[leback.livejournal.com]

I've never gotten the impression that either of my cats knows her name. But then, they have relatively little reason to know their names, since they are just as likely to be referred to as "Baby," "Princess," "Sweetie," "Pretty girl," "Fuzzy," or any of probably half a dozen other monikers.

Jasmine is much more loyal than Misha, but I don't get the impression she's stupider. I suspect she actually has a better-developed sense of perspective and risk than Misha does -- she knows that bad things happen sometimes, but she seems also to know that they usually don't. Misha is more uniformly suspicious.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Mine will twitch an ear to their own names, at least until they remember they're ignoring me. Little Girl never has. It's odd and in a way it's endearing. I can call her "Sweet Pea" or "Cute-face" or (in frustration) "Hairball" and it doesn't matter. She trusts me an incredible amount, wary though she was when I first met her. Humbling. Good thing I'm trustworthy.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

Buster is also fiercely loyal. Although, in fairness, he does not exhibit this by being particularly nice. He mostly exhibits his loyalty by trying to eat every plastic bag in the house, apparently in hopes that one of them will eventually taste good. :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That is hilarious. I have one (cat) who is terrified of plastic bags, apparently because of a night spent stuck half-in and half-out of one.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

Wow, that would be scary. Buster has no fear of plastic bags, which is probably not the safest thing. But he just licks and chews on them rather than climbing inside, so I suppose he is reasonably safe unless we leave something small enough to swallow laying around.

I did have a friend who told me her cat tried to climb into a KFC bag and got the hand opening stuck around her neck. So she dragged it with her as she ran off and every time it banged on the ground, she would get scared and start running faster.

Max (our older cat) did the same thing with a laundry basket one time and it was quite funny trying to get that off of him in the middle of the night in the dark and with him trying to run forward every time I managed to back him out of the strap an inch or so. :)

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

(http://www.daniellecorsetto.com/archive.php?today=617&comic=560)


(http://www.daniellecorsetto.com/archive.php?today=617&comic=584)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That last is something my Duchess would do. She spent a night with her head and arm stuck through the hole of a grocery bag, and when she couldn't outrun the thing, she turned into a quivering ball in a corner.

[apparentparadox]

Yes, Little Girl is extremely "loyal". She stays at home while you go out & work to make money to buy her food. If anything happens to her, you rush her to the vet to get it taken care of. You clean out her litter box.

Yep, sounds like Little Girl is loyal and you're stu even more loyal.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's clear who the winner is in this little contest. Maybe full-time schooling will make me a little less stu loyal... but somehow I doubt it. :-)

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I wasn't going to go there. ;-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

There's a longstanding question of who trains whom. Humans learn to scritch an offered belly or that spot behind the ear. Humans learn to buy dog food and leashes and collars and rabies tags and brushes. Humans learn which plants and foods are dangerous, and will often change their living space to work better for the animal.

Yeah, we're suckers. :-)

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

But much better people because of them!